Actors and Singers

Description

The essays collected in this volume were written between 1870 and 1873, years that brought a transformation in Germany. After Prussia’s spectacular defeat of France, the coalescing of German states into a unified Germany, and Bismarck’s declaration of the German Empire, Richard Wagner suddenly felt like a prophet whose predictions had come true before his eyes. At last the German culture he longed to enliven had a German state as grand as his own ambition. In the same period Wagner was deeply inspired by the works of Shakespeare, an influence that runs throughout this volume.